


Close and Continuing

by subjunctive



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day by day, they rebuild.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close and Continuing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



> Takes place immediately post-finale.

At the first meeting of the new S.H.I.E.L.D., Jemma is assigned to the medical ward. "You're our primary physician," Coulson tells her with a smile, albeit a strained one. She wonders what kind of toll his new role is taking on him. It's not the same as if he had just succeeded Director Fury, taking over his duties and responsibilities. No, he has to rebuild from the ground up: new infrastructure, new personnel, new everything. Jemma does not envy him the task, and is in fact grateful to be on the other end of receiving orders.

They each have their allotted tasks. Some of them approach being busy-work in their redundancy and pointlessness, but Jemma supposes that's part of the point. She's not complaining; her hands have been itching to fill out forms and check off lists for days. There's precious little else to do for the moment, until they have more people. It's just Coulson, May, Skye, Triplett, Koenig, and herself. Six people in a conference room built for at least thirty.

Her duties are to inventory and equip the medical ward to something approaching action-ready. For her part, Jemma is looking forward to work and people. Agents coming in from the cold. Maybe then it won't be so eerily quiet all the time. At present there just aren't enough voices to stop it feeling like an echoing cavern. (Never mind that she perhaps misses one voice in particular.)

  
 

"Give you a hand?"

"Er--" Jemma adjusts her glasses, looking up from her small kingdom of medical equipment, which is in disarray and must be put right.

"Can I give you a hand," Triplett repeats, waving at the machines. He's standing in the doorway.

Instinctively she almost says _no, thank you_ \- normally she and Fitz would so this sort of thing together, caught up in what Skye would undoubtedly call their "control freakiness" - before common sense catches up with her.

She supposes she'll have to get used to the difference.

"A hand would be nice," she says, with a small smile, but she avoids his eyes, which are too warm for her comfort. As they work, she settles instead for watching his hands and arms as he moves things around for her. (That's not better. He has very nice hands, which is patently unfair, the way Jemma sees it.)

"It is amazing," she mutters later, as they are equipping and loading the defibrillator, "how non-experts can declare a space 'fully functional' without even the most basic of medical equipment."

"The dangers of staffing a giant underground base with only one man," Triplett says agreeably enough, and then goes on to ruin it by adding, "But Agent Koenig did the best he could."

"I know he did," she huffs under her breath, and immediately regrets it. She flaps a hand apologetically. "Sorry, sorry."

"It's fine," he assures her carefully, and damn it all, why does he have to be so _nice_?

The defibrillator properly outfitted, they stand together for a moment with no work between them.

"So how's Fitz?" he segues.

Jemma's glasses are sweaty, sliding down the bridge of her nose. Irritated, she pushes them back up. "Fitz is fine. He's the same as ever, I mean."

(Not that she _knows_ any such thing, a little voice in the back of her mind whispers. Can't everyone tell? That you haven't been?

He's just in the next room over. It's fine.)

Triplett just nods, though, and squeezes her shoulder. When he lets go, she fancies she can feel the imprint his hand has left behind. It certainly feels warm and tingly enough. "I know it's been hard for you."

Not as hard as it's been for Fitz, she bites back. "How about that ultracentrifuge?" she says instead, summoning to her face a smile that feels too bright and brittle.

  
 

At dinner the next week, Skye looks tired; Jemma wonders if she's been sleeping, or if something else is wrong. Besides all the things that have gone wrong already, she thinks wryly.

"I can't believe Coulson expected me to hack the U.S. Air Force," grumbles Skye, poking at her mashed potatoes.

Jemma pauses mid-bite of green beans. "Do you think you can manage it? Also, why do you need to break into the U.S. military, informationally speaking?"

"So I have to put together this database, right, of all S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel and what happened to them - if they died, if they were HYDRA, et cetera. It's one of Coulson's pet projects. But to find out what happened to everyone . . ."

"Everything's been seized by the U.S. government," Triplett surmises. "Only place to go for information."

Skye points a fork full of potatoes at him. "Right. Exactly. And also, I did it already, Simmons, thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I was merely concerned for all of our safety should you be caught," says Jemma, dabbing the corner of her mouth with extra primness. 

Catching her eye, Skye makes a face, and Jemma smiles before she can help it.

"Do you think I could see that?" asks Triplett, leaning over the table, looking serious. "Whenever you're done with it, I mean."

With a shrug, Skye does something on her tablet and hands it over. "It's pretty much done. I mean, not everyone has been accounted for - there's a lot we don't know. Just type in the name of whoever you're looking for, or go straight to the list."

Trying not to be caught looking, Jemma watches as Triplett, engrossed, begins typing on the screen. His lower lip is caught between his teeth.

Jemma and Skye exchange a look, and she feels the mood at the table shift, becoming less light-hearted.

"Agent May," Skye calls out half-heartedly, waving the other agent over. "You're not getting away from us this time. I insist you eat dinner with us. Agent Triplett cooked, it's very delicious," she adds graciously.

"As long as it wasn't you," May deadpans, sliding her tray in next to Triplett.

"Ha, ha. But seriously, how do you look so chipper? I mean, chipper for you, not . . . anyway. You're just up so early! It's killing me!"

May slices into a peach with her knife. "Eating well. Staying active. Sleeping the whole night. By _not_ taking naps during the day."

Skye makes an "oops" face and turns to Simmons. "We've been getting up at five to work out our aggression."

"To _train_."

"That too." Skye pops one of May's blueberries into her mouth.

The banter ebbs and flows. However, Jemma is only half-listening to their conversation; the rest of her attention is being paid to Triplett, whose expression has only grown more serious over the last few minutes. Although she's struck by the desire to ask him if everything's okay, she doesn't want to draw everyone else's attention to him. Instead she nudges him with her foot under the table.

Glancing up at her, Triplett clears his throat and hands Skye's tablet back. He doesn't even bother manufacturing a smile, just excuses himself.

"Poor guy," mutters Skye, and the mood's broken again. "Guess he didn't like what he found out."

Jemma demolishes the remainder of her supper with the speed and precision befitting of a surgeon, and gets up. "I'm going to head out as well."

"Say hi to Fitz for me," Skye says casually, and Jemma's heart clenches. She manages to nod, ducking her head.

Fortunately, Triplett's bunk is on the way to her own, and Jemma considers it her duty to check up on a fellow team member. His door is cracked open still, so she raps on it lightly and lets the weight of her hand push it open as if by accident.

He looks up at her entrance, but doesn't look surprised, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and drawing deep breaths. She takes a seat next to him on the bed, tucking her skirt underneath her, and doesn't say anything.

"They're all dead, or HYDRA." His voice sounds rough; he doesn't meet her eyes. "My old team. I knew, but I didn't really, if you know what I mean. Guess I was hoping . . . _someone_ might have . . ."

Of course he was hoping. He's a good man, and he deserved better.

She takes his hand between hers. His palm is rough. He squeezes back like his life depends on it, and then his shoulders are shaking. It's just barely noticeable.

"We are going to make it through this," she says, her voice making a promise she doesn't know will be kept. She kisses his shoulder and leans against him anyway, ensconcing herself in his side.

He takes a deep breath, as if about to say something, then lets it out with a whoosh. He doesn't let go of her hand, and turns toward her. In the darkness of the room, it seems for a moment like almost anything could happen. Triplett kisses her on the forehead, mouth warm and dry.

"Can I tell you something?" she whispers, and instantly regrets it now that the words are out of her, in the open air. But now that they are out, they have a momentum, a gravity, that pulls her forward.

"Anything."

Jemma teeters on the brink of telling him, at once wanting to stay mum but also compelled by the desire to get this dark thing out of her, to exorcise it. "I haven't gone to see Fitz," she confesses.

"No?" She hears genuine surprise in his voice, and it makes her cringe.

"This whole time, I've--" She blinks away tears furiously, composes her voice. _Banish it,_ she tells herself. "I've just been pretending, I suppose, that he's on vacation or something. As though he's coming back next week, and everything will be like it was before." It's a little easier to say in the dark.

"Change is hard." It's an easy aphorism, but the way he says it, with a sigh, comforts her a little. Though he's saying it to her, she knows he's saying it to himself just as much.

"I'm not terribly well-equipped for it," she confides.

"Not all kinds of change are bad, though." He tugs on her hand a little, an attempt at teasing. "Are they?"

"Not all bad," she agrees, squeezing back. "Though some come with more paperwork than others."

"As if you don't love paperwork."

She laughs.

The next morning, Jemma pulls up a chair next to Fitz's bed and begins talking.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to a "Close and Continuing Relationship" form, which I got from _Covert Affairs_. I figure S.H.I.E.L.D. has something similar.


End file.
